Colombia’s paramilitaries cremated victims or threw them in the river at the request of the security forces and prosecution, a former paramilitary warlord said Thursday.
At a public event organized by newspaper El Espectador, Jose Ivan Laverde, a.k.a. “El Iguano,” said he cremated some 560 bodies and threw 40 in the river after warnings from the Prosecutor General’s Office that forensic investigators were on their way and “there would be a scandal.”
Also the security forces urged Laverde’s “Border Front,” the AUC unit that was active in the Catatumbo region, to get rid of bodies.
Jose Ivan Laverde
According to Laverde, his men cremated some 560 people and threw another 40 in the Catatumbo river in order to keep homicide rates low or to prevent forensic investigators discovering mass graves.
Jose Ivan Laverde
Laverde stressed the necessity to hear other paramilitary commanders who have not been allowed to testify and that multiple former commanders have been assassinated to prevent them from revealing who financed them.
The former AUC chief said he had already told prosecutors about the people who financed his paramilitary group and benefited financially from the paramilitaries, but that they were never prosecuted.
Jose Ivan Laverde
On the list Laverde handed to the prosecution are state-run oil company Ecopetrol and Gaseosas la Frontera, one of the companies of Carlos Arila Lulle, the owner of radio and television network RCN.
Laverde’s alleged list of sponsors
Source: Razon Publica
Colombia’s prosecution said in May that it had compiled a database of more than 2,300 alleged sponsors of the AUC, mainly businessmen and individuals linked to “different economic activities, particularly from the cattle, agriculture and hydrocarbon sectors.”
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in 2015, Former Vice-Prosecutor General Jorge Perdomo said more than 12,000 civilians were suspected of having sponsored the AUC.
Laverde urged the prosecutor general’s office to make the surrendered lists of alleged sponsors public.